The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Kindest Lie: A Novel by Nancy Johnson

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

The Kindest Lie: A Novel by Nancy Johnson Named a Most Anticipated book by O Magazine * GMA * Elle * Marie Claire * Good Housekeeping * NBC News * Shondaland * Chicago Tribune * Woman's Day * Refinery 29 * Bustle * The Millions * New York Post * Parade * Hello! Magazine * PopSugar * and more! “The Kindest Lie is a deep dive into how we define family, what it means to be a mother, and what it means to grow up Black...beautifully crafted.” —JODI PICOULT "A fantastic story...well-written, timely, and oh-so-memorable."—Good Morning America “The Kindest Lie is a layered, complex exploration of race and class." —The Washington Post A promise could betray you. It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives. Powerful and revealing, The Kindest Lie captures the heartbreaking divide between Black and white communities and offers both an unflinching view of motherhood in contemporary America and the never-ending quest to achieve the American Dream. About Nancy Johnson A native of Chicago's South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. The Kindest Lie is her first novel.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Wow, that was a beautiful one. Man, I should go for the opera class there. Hey, guys. Thanks for tuning in. We're going gonna have an amazing holy crap we put in the google machine amazing author and you won't believe what came up her name is nancy johnson and she wrote this extraordinary new book that is just out you'll love it the kindest lie a novel before we get that, to watch the amazing video version of her on the screen

telling us about her brilliant book, you can go to youtube.com, Forge House Chris Voss, hit that bell notification button, and also go to goodreads.com, Forge House Chris Voss, go to Facebook, LinkedIn, all those different groups and everything else. And today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Restream. Restream Studio is a web-based live broadcasting solution. You can live stream a Zoom meeting or webinar to up to 30 plus social channels and platforms at the same

time. We're actually using it to do our live broadcasting. You can get $10 credit towards their services using our affiliate link at restream.io forward slash join forward slash Chris Voss. It came out February 2nd, The Kindest Lie, a novel. And she's written this extraordinary book, and she's got an extraordinary bio. She's a native of Chicago's South Side. She worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. Her debut novel, The Kindest Lie, has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times,

and is featured on Entertainment Weekly's must list. It has been named one of the most anticipated books of 2021 by Newsweek. O, The Oprah Magazine, Shondaland, NBC News, Marie Claire, L, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Post, Good Housekeeping, Parade, Refinely 29, and more. More than that, even. So Bookstores nationwide select your novel as an indie next pick and librarians chose it for library reads that's when you know you really made it when those librarians step in everyone trusts a librarian nancy's work has been published in real simple and oh the oprah magazine she's a graduate of northwestern university and university of north carolina chapel hill she lives in downtown Chi-Town, Chicago.

Wait, is that the same? Yeah. And manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. How are you? And welcome to the show, Nancy. Hey, Chris. It's good to be here with you. It's wonderful to be with you.

Congratulations on the book. Thank you. It's been a whirlwind. I'm having fun like I am right now. There you go. We're glad you're having fun like i am right now there you go we're glad you're having fun on the show that's the whole reason to come on here and also move some books is shy town chicago or is shy town a suburb of chicago shy town is just another way some people say chicago all right so why are they so shy my people say they're shy i think that's kind of

more current than shy town there you go. The people of Chicago are so wonderful. I remember going there and just wandering around the city one day for a whole gig of shooting photography. And then I went to the famous pizza places and people were talking to me and they're just so damn friendly. It started creeping me out after a while because they weren't shy. Why are you talking to me? Yeah.

I'm like, at first I was like, this is cool. I'm adventuring in the city, but then I'm like, Hey, you need to leave me alone and let me eat this pizza. And you're not my type, but, but they were really nice, wonderful people in that town. Give us your plugs, give us your.com so people can find out more about you and order this book up. Sure. So my website is nancyjohnson.net and then I'm on twitter and instagram and my handles there are at nancy j author and then i'm on facebook and that is nancy johnson author so i'm active on all social media so you can find me there and i'll respond to you there you go and you've got the whole room raider background going there you've got these fun facts i actually was rated by a room

what did they what was the rating they gave me out of 10 10 out of 10 out of 10 yeah it's a surprise to see that i'm still waiting somebody told somebody was saying i needed a pineapple in the background i don't understand what the whole pineapple thing is there's something they've got with pineapple really so i have no idea what that means, but someone said that could take me above a 10 if I had a pineapple. Hey, staff, get a damn pineapple in here. No, I'm just kidding. So you've got the beautiful background. So those of you who are listening to this podcast, watch on YouTube. So Nancy, what motivated you to want to finally write a book? You've got this extraordinary journalist career. What made you sit down and go, I'm writing a book? Yeah, I've always been a writer. I like to say I know when I really began

to love writing and that was in first grade. I don't know if you remember those books that people used to have those memory books where you'd write down. These are my favorite things to do in kindergarten and first grade and all the way up through 12th grade. Maybe it was just because I was a nerd at an early age that I had those, but I found my book. And in kindergarten, my favorite activity was reading. And then I saw in first grade, I had added an activity. And so I love reading and writing. And so I can say, honestly, that I've been writing since, you know, about six years old. And so I've always loved being creative. And then I went on and pursued a journalism career. And that's where I really built my storytelling chops.

But I got tired of that because it turned into, if it bleeds, it leads. I'd be on this really great feature story and the scanners would go off. My pager would go off. There was a murder a couple of counties over and I had to abandon the story I wanted to cover to go do that. And so I got out of news and moved into corporate communications, which is what I do now. However, I have always wanted to tell stories that were not the stories making news

or the stories about whatever was happening in my organization. I wanted to tell the stories of my own imagination. And so I always knew that at some point I would try my hand at writing a novel. And so I did it. There you go. Now you got it. Tell us, give us like an arcing overview of the book,

if you would, please. Sure. So The Kindest Lie is a story of family, sacrifice, and love, all of it at the dawn of the Obama era. And the book centers on a woman named Ruth Tuttle. She's this successful Black woman who's Ivy League educated, definitely on the come up. She's got a great husband, but she's been keeping a secret from her husband and from a lot of people in her life. And the secret, I tell people right off the bat what the secret is in the book. The secret is that she had a baby when she was just 17 years old. Yeah. And she left her son behind in the dying Indiana factory town where she grew up. But now her husband's, it's time to start a family. It's time to go. Let's do it. But now her husband's, it's time to start a family.

It's time to go. Let's do it. But she can't do that until she makes peace with her past. So she returns to her hometown to search for her son. And that's when she gets there. She meets and forms this unlikely friendship with a young, poor young white boy whose nickname is Midnight. And he's mired in the very poverty that she managed to escape.

And when the two of them get together they're on this collision course of race and class that upends both of their lives wow that sounds quite extraordinary the kindest lie which is different than the unkindest lie this is interesting so you've said it in some historical fiction then i guess you could i never think of it as being historical fiction but i guess it probably is if you're thinking about the 90s and then 2008. That might be considered. I think people have different ideas of what is really considered historical, but I guess because I was an adult in the 90s, it doesn't feel like historical fiction. It just feels... That's true. We're not that old. I know. That's the thing. You were making me feel old, making me feel old i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't mean to make you feel old i was just

meeting the reference of the the inauguration of uh president uh barack obama and stuff and that new kind of hope in that era you know the that beautiful age where hey this is really freaking awesome the the inauguration he had was freaking huge and all the stars came out and it was a beautiful time for america not sure what happened the last five years but that's another story yeah that is or maybe it's not another story but well there you go there we can always talk about that but yeah there was that big celebration at grant park and all that in chicago but i wasn't here for it i was working working in Florida at the time. There you go. She goes on this journey to the Indiana town. And what were some of the reasons that you chose the title, The Kindest Lie? Yeah. So The Kindest Lie, we were talking earlier about,

I don't really rank the lies, even though the title is The Kindest Lie. It's not like I have a kind lie, a kinder lie, and then the kindest. But it's interesting that I thought of that title because when I think about lies, it's really about the lies that we tell to protect the people we love or even to protect ourselves sometimes. Ruth, in many ways, is telling lies to herself that she's not really as tethered to her past and to her family and community and even her son as she really is tethered to her past and to her family and community and even her son as she really is. So she thinks she's lying to herself and thinking that, hey, I can just abandon my hometown, go to Yale, then move to Chicago, have this brand new life and reinvent myself and not really have

to think about everything that I've left behind. And so she's telling the lie. And then she has a grandmother known as Mama in the book. And Mama keeps a lot of secrets and tells a lot of lies. I won't go into what those are, because those would be spoilers. But yeah, so she tells a lot of lies, but she does it for the best of reasons. And it's to protect her granddaughter. And in some cases, she's protecting her grandson as well. And then the macro level kind lie would be the lies that America has told itself about how good and honorable it is, particularly to marginalized communities. Yeah. We've been doing that for 450 years. It's pretty helpful. We need to stop it. We need to knock it off. We've done a lot of social justice interviews and book authors on the show. And

until we settle all this racism and all the shit we've done for 450 years, we're just never going to be well. We just, in fact, it's getting worse because we're not fixing it. But I think it impacts everybody. I think a lot of times when we talk about issues of race, people automatically think, oh, this is only about doing something for black people. This is about all of us. And we're not, none of us, we're not going to be able to heal any of us or the nation until we deal with what

I think is America's original sin. The original sin. The rising tide lifts all boats. And sadly, a lot of people think of helping marginalized communities as scarcity sort of thinking. If I help that person, I have to take for me to give to them. That's not the way it works. And so a rising tide lifts all boats and everyone can contribute. And that used to be the beautiful thing about this country when people came here to New York in the late 1800s and early 2000s. I'm a descendant of one of my great grand, great grandson. I think that's what it is. My great grandfather came from Germany in the 1800s. I'm an import. Last time time i checked into this whole thing of this melting

pot of what america is and how it makes it better but unfortunately sadly everyone's gotta be like it's that guy who's stealing from you they're stealing from you look over there they pick your pocket i like what you said about the scarcity mindset that's so true that's one of the things i was trying to point out in the book when I was showing certain segments, at least of white America, particularly Midnight's Father, Butch Boyd, that character, he's got some bigoted views, you know, and I think he's somebody who has that. He's lost his job at the auto plant. So he's down on his luck in many ways. And I think he has that, what you described as that scarcity mindset, where you think that a dollar in somebody else's pocket is a dollar less in mine. And you and your kids have advantages and you're able to get ahead and be successful because there's less for me and for

mine. And that's what we see. And I think in many ways we're trained in this country and around the world, I think, to think that way, that there always has to be somebody below you. Otherwise you can't really excel. Yeah. I is never big enough for everybody to get a piece of it. I think it's Mrs. Wilkerson. She talks about the book on cast. I just started reading that. That's a brilliant book. It's very tough. I've had to stop and cry a few times, many times, actually. It's really tough in the middle and towards the end where I'm at, but it's a necessary. I, I towards the end where i'm at but it's a necessary i i the people on the show know this i talk about all the time this really it really should be a book that everyone has to read in junior high i'm not sure that's a book that

elementary school talks about that where just what you said that this idiocy of being like somebody's got to be above and something that's not the way it really should be working, but sadly politicians do this and stuff. So in the book, do you, you mentioned there was some different lies going on with some of the different characters in that. Is that really a play out into how those lies play off each other or affect or come out through the book and stuff? In what way did you use it as like a different place throughout the book or is it just lies?

Not really. I don't think I was intentional about certain sections of the book revealing certain lies. But I think it's really just throughout the entire novel. You've got the lies that are ever present in there. Like when I talk about America, I think that's overriding everything because that's what's impacting both black and white communities in the book is some of the lies about the American dream and who has access to it and that kind of thing. So you see that throughout and then this whole dichotomy of race and class. But then under the umbrella of that, what I consider the big lie, you have these other smaller lies that are more about the intimate lives of the characters.

And I think we get to see who they are and where they fit into this whole idea of success and achievement and the American dream and the things that they'll do to get it. So that's where the kindest lie fits in too, is that you see what Ruth is willing to do to have a career and be successful and to get out of this hometown that she said is like a trap door. You fall down in it and you can't get out of it. And then she's got her grandmother, like I mentioned before, mama, who has dreams of her own. There are things that she wanted for her own life that didn't happen, unfulfilled dreams. And so she's putting so much onto her granddaughter. All the hopes and the dreams are resting in her. And as we've poured so much

into you, we're not going to let you fall. Because if you do, it's not only letting yourself down, it's letting everybody down. And so you've got this whole community that you're carrying on your shoulders in many ways. And so if there have to be some lies told to make sure that her granddaughter is successful, then she believes it's worth it. There you go. It's an interesting ways that we go through life and the patterns we do and the ways we support each other, whether it's telling the truth or telling lies and stuff like that. It's really, are there any teasers maybe that you want to give out that are going to, that are in the book that maybe people, they've got to go read the book to find out what they are.

Any particular plot twists or teasers maybe you want to throw out or was there anything that you were like any stories you can share without giving the book away that you would like to share? I would say so. I'm constantly playing with this nuance of race and class. And so there is a scene in the book where I talked about Midnight. He's the 11-year-old poor white boy. And there's a scene where he's with his friends other boys black and brown boys who are friends and classmates and this is over to the book of ways and they're in this and i'll just tell you about the scene they're in a convenience store and there's this white manager there who is hassling them because the kids are being kids they're being mischievous and overturning

some of the display cases and you got bunions which I thought was a fun to play with. In a scene that's about something serious to have Funyuns in there, it was an interesting play. And yeah, so the Funyuns and all these other snacks have been knocked over. And when he's, what's going on? And he basically zeroes in with a laser on the one Black boy. And yeah, Black boy named Corey in the book. And he zeroes in on him,

assuming that he may have stolen something. Open up your jacket. Let me make sure that you didn't steal something. And Midnight being white, he's, you know, why didn't you just tell him you didn't take anything? And why did you take that kind of treatment from him type thing? And especially when they left the store. And Corey, the black boy, is just going to shut up to midnight because he is moving through the world very differently as a black boy. And then he knows that this white store manager wields a certain amount of power and influence

and that this thing could go the wrong way. And he knows that because of the way he's been brought up and the way his parents have taught him. They've had what's called the talk with him when he's 11 years old, like how to comport yourself with some of these white authority figures, whether it's the police or it's the manager of a convenience store. And so he says, you just don't get it, is what he was telling Midnight. And it's true. Midnight didn't get it. And that's a scene that I think is very interesting because it shows the whole race class

piece because Midnight is poor and his dad, Butch, has just lost his job at the auto plant. His grandmother is struggling to keep the shop she owns afloat. But at the same time, Midnight is able to move through the world and through Ganton indiana a lot more freely than his black and brown friends can even though he doesn't understand it yeah why that he can he doesn't understand his white privilege but it's real yeah so he was interesting i remember at the beginning of the trump administration i think it was van jones or someone wrote i wish i could find it i've gone back and looked for it but But it was really interesting. They wrote an article that said basically the reason this blowback is coming from mid-America, they call it flyover America, sometimes these towns that the jobs have left and

the future has left them behind. And they're thinking that white supremacy or white nationalism is the thing to bring back to help them. And I remember they wrote something that basically was to the thing that the problem with what's going on in these white towns or these white people is they're finally finding out what it's like to be economically marginalized, to have a hard time getting jobs, to have a hard time getting stuff that a lot of other marginalized communities have been going through for 50, 100 years in big cities and different communities as well. And they're just starting to learn that, hey, we've really seen that. We've seen the dissolving of the middle class America to a point now where

everyone's in the struggling pot. Yeah, a lot of us are struggling. You look at where we are now with the global pandemic and so many people have lost their livelihoods and are struggling. And that's another way that this current period we're in now mirrors what was happening in 2008 when I set my book during the Great Recession. And yeah, I agree that some of these jobs are never coming back. And the manufacturing sector, some of that's gone. And people are struggling. And it's not only the loss of the jobs, but it's the changing demographics. We're seeing the browning of America.

And we are hearing the statisticians say that soon that white people will be in the minority in this country. And that's something that some people are fighting hard against. So then you have a president like Donald Trump, who used to be a Democrat, becomes a Republican, he's going to do what's in his self-interest politically. And he's reinforcing some of these fears that some of those working class white people have about what they're losing. And so that's what it means to make America great again. It's like, when was it great before? And what era are we trying to go back to? And I think he's speaking to some of those fears, people who want to go back to the way things used to be when they were clearly in the majority and that marginalized people were even more marginalized than they are today.

And so that's what they're hearkening back to. I think that's what we saw with the Trump era. And we'll still continue to see it. We saw it with the insurrection of the Capitol. That's part of what that was about. And that's not over. Yeah. Just seeing the Confederate flag in the Capitol, that made me mental.

It still makes me mental. Yeah, the Confederate flag and seeing noose and all kinds of things. Yeah, just insane. I remember seeing it in the Capitol and thinking, I was having such an anxiety fit that day. I thought I was going to have a heart attack just watching. I was so angry. And I had to go lay down. I had to just be like, if I don't lay down,

I think the old heart's going to burst out of its chest. But yeah, there's a lot of unresolved things in this country. And so is your hope that maybe profiling some of these things in your book about class and race, is there hope that as people read it, regardless of what side they're on, or there's not really science, we're all human beings, but regardless of who reads it, they can see some of the issues that are there and maybe learn a little bit about just not the beautiful stories you've written in the novel, but also maybe learn the lesson with race and class. Definitely. That's something that I wanted to do with this book for sure.

The goal is for people to experience life through the shoes and through the lens of somebody they never would have ever met before or ever walked in their shoes before. And I think a lot about now I look back on it, I think about last year with the murder of George Floyd. And now we're watching his trial on TV right now. It's just heartbreaking to when we relive it. But after his death, there were so many in white America, in particular, who started their anti-racism journeys, and they were reading a lot of the nonfiction books, which are very good books to be reading. But I think, in some ways, it creates this sense of defensiveness. Okay, you're telling

me about this is what white privilege is and what white supremacy is and all this stuff and what racism is about. And then I think it makes some say, wait, wait a minute, that's not me. It's using me up being a racist. Some people feel attacked when they do that kind of reading. But I think there's this power with fiction, though, to help people to really get into these issues and to understand where they might fit, because it works on them in a more subtle way when they fall into the story and the characters. And you get to know these characters, then you start to see things that maybe you didn't see before when you were reading a nonfiction book that was outlining racism in a very analytical and clinical way. But here,

with fiction, I'm pulling at your emotions, your heartstrings, and that's the way I think to really get people to think about it and to also build empathy. I love how you describe that because, yeah, sometimes the nonfiction books, and we've had a lot of great authors on, sometimes it is clinical. Here's what racism is, and here's how it's bad. And that's helpful. But in your sense, one of the things that Martin Luther King had said was one of the problems is we don't live together in communities. We're separated. And even more so, like when Andy Gawd Jr. came on the show, we were talking about how freeways and redlining and everything, Jim Crow laws of naming streets after certain Confederate generals to keep people from moving in, the Confederate statues and stuff, all of this was designed to keep us apart.

And the more apart we are, the less we understand each other. So the more suspicious we are of each other and the more there's no empathy, like you mentioned, where we go, this is another human being just like me. And they have hopes and dreams. They have children. They want the best for their children. They're just, everybody's a human being just like me. And they have hopes and dreams. They have children. They want the best for their children. They're just, everybody's a human being. And learning about each other's ways and cultures, the way we do things,

and just being comfortable with that as opposed to being like, I don't know what's going on over there. I'm worried. And everything is so segregated. Pago, which is known for being one of the most segregated cities in the country. And so we live in separate in the country. And so

we live in separate neighborhoods quite often. And even if your neighborhood is integrated, quite often I think about, do you really know your neighbors or the people around you who may be of a different race or ethnicity? Because quite often we socialize with the people who are most like us. That's who we're having dinner with. That's who we're going to movies with and playing cards with. It's the people most like us. That's for the most part, that's what's happening. And we're not really getting to know each other. Yeah. I remember growing up when I was a kid, we knew our neighbors. We'd go and have dinner with them and he'd borrow salt and sugar and stuff. Even up here, we have an all white neighborhood in Utah because it's Utah. And we still don't know our neighbors because that's what people do nowadays. I'm not talking to that dude, but no, it's a,

it's an interesting thing. And I love how you weave that into a story so people can get it. Cause that's definitely what we need is more empathy. We need to understand each other as human beings. We need to care for each other and we need to learn each other's journeys and what we're going through because everyone's got a story and everyone's going through a journey and understanding that can make things a lot better. Anything in the book we haven't touched on that you want to mention? Yeah, I would say the things that the people do to ensure or try to ensure the success of their children. I don't know if you picked up hair was a big focal point in the book and there's this scene where Ruth goes home to her grandmother's house and she hasn't seen her in many years and the first thing that

or one of the first things that her grandmother the character of Mama says is you got to do something about that wild hair of yours and Ruth is wearing her hair in a natural hairstyle so it's it hasn't been straightened and made more European or white. It's in a natural state. And so she told her, you know, I'm going to make an appointment for you to go get your hair done. And it's interesting that when I first wrote that, I went to a workshop, a writing workshop. And my instructor there, a published author, told me then when I first wrote that piece, that part of it, that mama doesn't hate natural hair but mama believes natural hair is going to hold her granddaughter back and becoming successful and i was like yeah that is

what i'm trying to say here in that scene and yeah and it's just interesting when you think about somebody like mama who is that concerned with her granddaughter's hair because she believes that will limit her opportunities. And she's also telling her that I named you Ruth because it's a name that would get you to the interview. And I have that's in the first chapter of the book, you know, why she's named Ruth. And the reason I put that in there when I was in my MBA program at UNC Chapel Hill, I met a woman who works for a large bank and she's a vice president of human, one of the vice presidents in human resources. And she was just telling some of us in class that she looks at resumes all the time in HR. And she said, this woman's black, mind you.

And she said, but I tell these people all the time, make sure you give your kid a name that's going to get them to the interview. And She was seeing all these names that were unique cultural names. And it's really sad. At first, I was put off when she said it because obviously, I believe people should be able to name their kids whatever they want to name them. And a lot of these names have history to them. And that's cultural. And you should be able to do that.

And I still believe that. But I remembered what she said. And it made me think there's a reason she said it. She's trying to protect and to set people up for success, particularly Black candidates for jobs up for success. And that's why I put that in the book, because that's the same thing Mama's trying to do for her granddaughter, is set her up for success, even from the very beginning when she gave her a name. And that's a really sad commentary on our society. It's well known and studied that there's discrimination that takes place with resume names and stuff like that.

I know we were supposed to have Jasmine Manns on the show and she ended up getting sick, but she wrote a lot of beautiful poems about mothers and how they have to prepare their children, especially their boys, for all the stuff that goes on in America, the George Floyd things and all the different things. And it's really heartbreaking. And then fortunately, over the last year, we've had a lot of inclusion officers on the show. A lot of book authors wrote on inclusion, talked about inclusion. But like you mentioned earlier, there's a lot of people that still haven't got their unconscious bias cleared. They still process a lot of their different things. And sometimes they don't. And when you go, hey, that's kind of racist what you're doing there. And they're like,

no, I'm not a racist. And you're like, no, you haven't gotten clear a few things. We can tell. That reminds me, I just did, I don't know if you got a chance to see it, but I just did an event with the author Jodi Picoult with the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Ohio. And our topic was fiction and race in America. And Jodi Picoult, she has a lot of fans. And so she posted on her Facebook page just to promote it that we're going to be talking in conversation with Nancy Johnson about race. And she was flooded with hundreds of comments from people on Facebook who were saying, I'm not a racist. I'm never going to apologize for being white. And quite a few of them said, I'm never going to read your books again because of it.

And we addressed that in our conversation when we went on live, we talked about some of that and where does that come from? And yeah, it was just really sad how some people are so triggered and so anxious to say that white privilege doesn't exist. Yeah. The cast book just really describes it. I like how the cast, Mrs. Wilkerson, does it in the cast book where she, by using the word cast, and I'm not saying we shouldn't use the word racism, but by using it the way she explains it as a caste system she takes away people's unconscious bias and so when i'm reading i can see that a lot of my friends who are challenged and they haven't gotten their shit together and they haven't got cleared up and everybody does have unconscious bias i'm completely

aware of that because i'm always working on mine but she explains it such a way and puts it such a way that that even if you have some unconscious bias, she's not using some of those keywords that trigger people, hopefully, into the defensive mode and hopefully to keep their minds more open as they go through it. It was extraordinary to me in the book, too, that she parallels it with stories of the India caste system and the Nazis who used our eugenics to do the most horrific things ever and it was really sad that even nazis were like we're not doing some of the stuff the americans do uh in the south we're not doing that we're above that and you're just like wow man that's just real

statement is some of the bad stuff we saw that in the last four years with other countries looking at us like look americans you don't have the moral high years with other countries looking at us like look you don't have the moral high ground anymore yeah like look at you yeah well like we don't want to be seen with them anymore yeah yeah yeah there's so many americans apologizing i had so many of my friends that would call me up be like are you guys okay over there man same with me especially canadian friends yeah yeah they'd be like are you guys getting through this because we're worried we're really fucking worried i was like we're i'm worried too you're you're like help help help georgia pretending to contact obama and say you left us with a bad babysitter come i i still think we should build a giant monument to Stacey Abrams.

I think we owe, I think this whole damn country owes her. She is just an unsung hero in many ways. I want a statue. I want a statue as tall as the Washington Monument for her, for what she pulled off. What a great visionary. Most people in politics, they just go, no, just get out the vote for the Democrats or get out the vote for the Republicans that are registered. Screw all the people who don't vote. And she's like, no, man, I'm getting the vote for the Democrats or get out the vote for the Republicans that are registered. Screw all the people who don't vote.

And she's like, oh, man, I'm getting everybody to have the opportunity to vote. And she could have been really bitter after her political defeat, which shouldn't have been a defeat, her political defeat. But she didn't. I remember hearing her say she sat shiver for a certain number of days and just contemplated what she wanted to do next. And then began this fair fight for the vote brilliant woman it's brilliant it seems like she doesn't want a thing in the cabinet i wonder if she wants to be governor georgia i think she's going to try again that would be once she's able to make sure everybody can vote and it's fair and

turning georgia blue this last time i could see her definitely running again for that i'm all for that yeah i'll move to georgia and vote for her i know i used to live in georgia and i'm like i was mad that i was no longer in georgia and i couldn't go and vote for her yeah there you go so do you have any characters picked out for this to be a movie did you think about any as you're writing the book and stuff not really i don't i probably don't watch enough movies the only person i thought of was for the character of ruth and now i'm trying to remember oh leticia she was the one who played was it shuri she was in the black panther movie she was like the black panther's uh sister yeah yeah so she was definitely i think she had the same look, natural hairstyle, thin, brown skin, black woman. And also she was a science and math nerd and geek in that movie.

And so that kind of fit for me with thinking of the character of Ruth. But I haven't thought about anybody else. You've got to get Denzel Washington in there. Denzel Washington. I usually think of Denzel for everything. But then I have to remember that he's aging with me and everybody else in terms of playing the characters who might be in their 20s you know what i mean maybe morgan freeman right i don't know why his name escapes me who's the guy who does the who did all the great tarantino movies there's too many snakes

in this motherfucking plane why can't oh i know you're talking about i can't i'm getting old i know this is bad but you can go full tarantino with your book and have him in there and you'd be like why the hell is there all these motherfucking lies uh so anyway it sounds awesome i don't know but i have a tv film agent and of course she's shopping it around we'll see what comes of that but i could see the book having another life on the small screen do you see this being a second book in a series or do you want to go another direction with your next book? No, I don't plan on this being a series. And I do have a deal for a book too, also with William Morrow, Harper Collins. So I'm excited about that. That just happened recently. And the second novel will be called People of Means.

Oh, wow. And it's dual timeline set in 1960 and 1992. And it follows an upper class Black mother and daughter, both of them coming of age at different pivotal moments of national reckoning, racial reckoning. And the mother is coming of age in 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee, during the sit-ins of the civil rights movement. And then her daughter in 1992, who's in Chicago, but influenced by the LA riots that took place with the acquittal of the four officers for beating Rodney King. So they're looking at, it's like love and identity, purpose,

different views on resistance between these two women. And yes, I'm excited about it. I just now have to write it. There you go. Now you got to write it. You got the contract, you got the deal. I know. Whereas the first book was The Kindest Lie.

It took me six years to write because nobody was waiting for it. Now I got. Now you got the gun to your head. You got the whole, you got the agent calling going hey you got that book ready and there's pressure i was saying this in an event recently i was saying there's all this self-imposed pressure for book two and the woman interviewing me said oh no it's not just self-imposed she said we as readers are pressuring you oh there you go you got your audience now there you go you rock it was interesting to me. I had Eddie God Jr.

And Eddie was introducing me to James Baldwin for the first time. I didn't go to college. I started my first business at 18. So I skipped the whole college thing. So I never got a chance to learn about James Baldwin. I've just been in my own tunnel. And reading his book, Begin Again, about James, I really connected with James. And what's really interesting about a lot of what he wrote

and talked about is you can literally take everything from the sixties of what he said about race relations and issues, and you can put it right. You can put it in the nineties with your book. You can put it in today's thing. It's the same damn problems. We haven't learned anything from what James told us. He certainly was a visionary. Yeah. In many ways. I need to read Eddie Glaude Jr.'s book. It's an excellent book. A little bit of tears here and there.

Excellent book. I think next to Christopher Hitchens, James is one of my favorite orators people listen to. Like sometimes I just play videos in the background. But there's a delivery that he has that's superior logic, but also – I'm not Baldwin or Eddie Glover. Oh, did I say Eddie actually does a lot of the same thing too on Morningstar? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love listening to Eddie when he's on MSNBC as an analyst,

and I'm like, I could listen to him for days. Yeah, he can drop it right into a container, and he can hit that little 30- second spot or whatever he needs to do. And he can put all the emotion in it and all the things. And you're just like, God damn, he should be a preacher or something. So yeah, I misspoke. So James Baldwin. You're talking about listening to him speak.

Yeah. So I love listening to him speak and just a great orator, but he can put that emotional, he can mix the emotional logic, which really is, I love that sort of stuff. I like really smart stuff, but I like really emotional stuff. So I don't know what that means. Oh, no. Yeah, there was a documentary on his life like a few years ago. I don't know if you've seen it already.

I'm not sure if I've seen, I think there's one movie that's really hard to get a hold of. It's like really a pain in the butt to get a hold of. I wonder if that's the one. Because this one wasn't in all theaters. I remember it was just in all theaters. I saw it in the theater. Yeah, hold of i wonder if that's the one because this one wasn't in all theaters i remember it was just all theaters i saw it in the theater yeah yeah so it'll be interesting when you write that book between the 60s and 90s maybe there'll be parallels there it's your book so i'm just i'm sure there will be yeah haven't changed you're right it's really sad like it's you

literally can drop quotes and go 70 70 years later, same problems. Way to go, people. The one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. Thereby, we just keep going like this. Just repeating it. Yeah. And hopefully it'll stop. So it was wonderful to have you on.

Anything you want to plug on the book before we go out? No, I think just get the book, The Kindest Lie. There you go. The people who are watching, they see me, but those who are listening don't know I'm holding a copy of it. She's holding up the book. I'm doing a Vanna White impression. There you go. You got to do the whole model thing.

Oh, right, right. I do the whole, like, here's the class. Anyway, I'm just kidding. It's definitely going to be appealing to anybody who, you know, wants to understand more about race and class in America and about the hope at the time of the Obama era. And then what happened after that, when for many, there was this feeling of loss of hope for many people in the country, whether that be racial or socioeconomically. Yeah. And I think it'll help you understand too, where we are today.

So it's very timely and timeless. Yeah. Awesome, Sauce. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs and learn more about you in order of the book. Sure. So my website is nancyjohnson.net. And then you can also find me on Twitter and on Instagram.

And it's at Nancy J. Author. And I'm also on Facebook. Nancy Johnson Author is my Facebook page. And so I'm excited to meet people and interact in social. There you go, guys. Follow her. Find out more about her or the book. Go to your local bookseller and learn more about the book and what's going on.

It sounds like a beautiful book. And she's got a huge history of media and writing stories. So I'm sure just you're going to love the book. The Kindest Lie, a novel. Check it out. You can order it up. Nancy, thank you for spending some time with us and sharing your book with us. Thank you so much for having me, Chris.

This was fun. Thank you. It was wonderful to have you. And we'll look forward to getting you on the next book there. Yes, please. So there's some pressure. We just stacked on that. That wasn't nice. All right, guys, we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward says Chris Vossy, the video version of this. Go to goodreads.com forward says Chris Vossy. We're reading and reviewing over there. Also go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter,

all those different places that we're publishing and sharing all the wonderful people we have on. Wear your mask, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.